The World Sikh News is pleased to pre­sent the speeches of Sikh British Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans Preet Kaur Gill and Tan­man­jeet Singh Dhesi at the clos­ing de­bate of the Sikh her­itage and aware­ness month in the British Par­lia­ment.

At the cul­mi­na­tion of the Sikh her­itage and aware­ness month in the United King­dom, the chair of the All Party Par­lia­men­tary Group for British Sikhs –the first Sikh fe­male mem­ber of Par­lia­ment Ms. Preet Kaur Gill and the first tur­baned Sikh Mem­ber Par­lia­ment Tan­man­jeet Singh Dhesi pre­sented and the past and con­tem­po­rary con­tri­bu­tion of Sikhs in var­i­ous walks of life of the United King­dom.

Speak­ing on the oc­ca­sion, Ms. Preet Kaur Gill lauded British Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans for ac­knowl­edg­ing the con­tri­bu­tion of the Sikhs in var­i­ous walks of life of the UK –in­di­vid­u­ally and col­lec­tively.

She pointed that as per the Cen­sus 2011, Sikhs con­sti­tute less than 1 per­cent of the British pop­u­la­tion but have to take in their stride more than 2 per­cent of the hate crimes in the coun­try.

Ris­ing above the bar of her Sikh con­stituents, she spoke on her com­mit­ment re­gard­ing the role that she would like to play for all com­mu­ni­ties.  She ve­he­mently sought an end to dis­crim­i­na­tion of Sikhs in British so­ci­ety.

In to­day’s Par­lia­men­tary de­bate on ‘Con­tri­bu­tion of Sikhs to the UK’, Tan Dhesi MP for Slough re­marked that de­spite Sikhs only com­pris­ing 1% of the British pop­u­la­tion, their con­tri­bu­tion to our so­ci­ety is huge.

In terms of cur­rent and fu­ture pro­jects, amongst other things, he hoped for con­tin­u­ing Gov­ern­ment sup­port for the Na­tional Sikh War Memo­r­ial in Lon­don; and to en­cour­age even more in­ter­na­tional links, in­clud­ing di­rect Lon­don-Am­rit­sar flights.

Tan­man­jeet Singh Dhesi an­tic­i­pated that with sup­port, the British Sikh com­mu­nity, through its strong work ethic, will no doubt go from strength to strength and make an even greater con­tri­bu­tion to British life.

The early day mo­tion moved by Mem­ber Par­lia­ment Seema Mal­ho­tra, Dr Philippa Whit­ford, Tan­man­jeet Singh Dhesi, Jim Shan­non, Preet Kaur Gill and Sir Robert Syms on 16 April 2019 and co-signed by close to a 100 mem­bers of Par­lia­ment, for the Sikh Aware­ness and His­tory Month de­clared that “this House ex­tends con­grat­u­la­tions to Sikhs cel­e­brat­ing Vaisakhi in the UK and around the world.”

Among other things, the Mo­tion for the Sikh His­tory and Aware­ness Month noted that 14 April marks Vaisakhi and the found­ing of Khalsa in 1699 by the 10th Guru of the Sikhs, Guru Gob­ind Singh.

Slough MP Tan­man­jeet Singh Dhesi, through email has in­formed the World Sikh News that, “Dur­ing the course of the Na­tional Sikh Aware­ness and His­tory Month, we have been able to cel­e­brate Sikh achieve­ments and cul­ture, from our sec­ond an­nual ‘Tur­ban Aware­ness Day’ to wel­com­ing speak­ers on ‘Guru Nanak and Fem­i­nism’.”

It fur­ther noted that Gur­d­waras across the UK have or­gan­ised Na­gar Kir­tan pro­ces­sions in the UK’s towns and cities, help­ing to share the teach­ings and val­ues of Sikhs and the as­sis­tance pro­vided by Sikhs to the home­less and oth­ers in our com­mu­ni­ties and across the world through Lan­gar and other Sewa, self­less ser­vice, in­clud­ing hu­man­i­tar­ian re­lief.

Sig­nif­i­cantly, the British Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans ac­knowl­edged the suc­cess of Sikh Aware­ness Month in Cal­i­for­nia, US and On­tario, Canada.